Colorado Wildfire

“Damn right you don’t.”

“Neither do you. The state patrol doesn’t have a coroner. You can’t do an autopsy.”

He opened his mouth, no doubt to swear, but nothing came out. Maybe Swain County was too small and too limited in resources to handle this case, but Natchez wasn’t equipped for doing a murder investigation, either.

“I suggest,” she said, “that we request assistance from the FBI on these cases.”

“Good plan,” Ty said as he held up his cell phone. “I just talked to my supervisor, and he mentioned the same thing.”

Natchez gave a nod. “I’m okay with that. If you need my help, I’ll do whatever I can.”

Ty asked him, “Is losing a man going to cause you any problem in scheduling?”

“To tell the truth, Morrissey was cutting back on his hours. He used more sick time than a teenage girl getting out of gym class with the cramps.”

She turned away. Where, oh where, were the ambulances? There was no hope of providing sensitivity or enlightenment to Natchez. She tried to ignore him, but he was like a rash that wouldn’t stop itching.

Natchez swaggered around the scene with Ty. They paused beside the dead man on the road, whom Natchez recognized immediately from a BOLO. Well, of course he would. The guy probably had every notice on file going back ten years, probably practiced with them every night like flash cards.

“I heard a rumor, Ty. Maybe you can verify. I heard that Wade Calloway is still alive.”

Too much! Hearing her husband’s name on the tongue of this bigmouthed jerk sent Sam right over the edge. In a couple of quick strides, she was beside Natchez. With her right hand, she yanked his wrist behind his back, putting a nasty crease in his shirtsleeve. Her left hand held her stun gun at his throat.

“Never speak of my husband again, unless you intend to humbly and without profanity praise him for being an American hero. And show some respect for me, the grieving widow.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Finally, she’d got through to him. All it took was an outrageous act of violence on her part.

Chapter Six (#ulink_c52c0635-3bf8-5ecb-8fd6-d07ef748a105)

When Sam drove past the supermarket on the east edge of Woodridge, she noticed more activity than usual in the parking lot, and she wondered why. Typically, if a blizzard was predicted, everybody rushed to stock up on food and necessities. The fire might be having the same effect, even though gathering more supplies wasn’t a good idea if your house might be burned to rubble.

On the wide main street that went through the center of town, every slanted parking space was taken outside the diner, the coffee shop and the two taverns. This was something she understood. People liked to huddle together and reassure each other when trouble was near.

She wished that she could do the same.

But she couldn’t talk about Wade’s return from the dead or the possible danger from a criminal cartel. Not even Ty knew the whole story; she hadn’t shown him Wade’s gun that had been planted in Morrissey’s car. Besides, Ty wasn’t here. He’d gone with the ambulances. One would deliver the wounded to the hospital in Glenwood Springs. The other would transport Morrissey and Reyes to wherever their bodies would be autopsied.

Sam was alone with her problems.

Somehow, she had to cope.

After a stop at the one traffic light in town, her SUV cruised past the Swain County Courthouse, where the 911 dispatchers were babysitting her daughter. Sam’s bloodshot eyes bored a hole in the two-story building, wishing she could see through the chiseled red stones to where her daughter was drawing or skipping rope in the wide corridors or sitting at a desk and rearranging the clutter.

Before she picked Jenny up, Sam needed to be certain that her house was safe from intruders. Somebody had sneaked inside to steal Wade’s revolver. They might come back, might want to grab her to get to Wade. Worse, they might come after Jenny.

The threat to her daughter enraged her, made her as fierce as a mama grizzly. But it also terrified her. Was she tough enough to keep her child safe? Sam couldn’t take that chance; she needed to get Jenny far from harm’s way.

Luckily, the solution was obvious: her dad was a captain in the Portland, Oregon, police department. Sam had already called him and arranged for Jenny to visit Grandma and Grandpa. The approaching fire provided a good excuse for sending her daughter to safety, while she herself stayed here and helped Wade investigate.

About six miles outside town, she made a left onto a curvy asphalt road that she paid extra to have cleared by the snowplow in the winter. Now, in springtime, the drive was green and pleasant with the new growth of shrubs and leaves sprouting on the trees. Runoff from the snowmelt made a sparkling rivulet in the ditch beside the road.

After her SUV passed the neatly lettered sign that marked Kendall’s Cabin, her nearest neighbors, she drove around a stand of aspen to the two-story log home that she and Wade had built. The peaked roof above the second floor covered a balcony that stretched across the front of the house and provided shelter for the wraparound porch. A huge cedar deck jutted from the south end of the house outside the kitchen. At this time of year, she and Jenny usually ate dinner at the picnic table on the deck, where they could watch the hummingbirds zoom around the hanging feeders filled with red-tinted sugar water.